by Evans, Mike
Mark pushed his glasses up, looking around the exposed open highway which was very much secured once on the opposite side of the fence. “You think that maybe we could take everything inside of your gates so we are safe? It doesn’t seem very smart to stand out here in the open. I’m sure that is how you military folk think it should be, but I couldn’t do much with one of those heavy looking guns but to hit someone with it or to maybe throw it if I was lucky,” Mark said trying to make a joke out of it unsuccessfully.
Clary asked, “So are you going to be able to set up something to prove that this so-called powder works?”
“It works. Brandy and I were trapped in this building, which is how we met up with Earl. I actually about cut his head off because he was so bloody. I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t one of the Turned. Scott and Bob came for us, they only had vials of this that they were using in a less than impressive fashion. Basically, they were just throwing the vials at the Turned. They had to clear the building and lock it down before we could come out,” Shaun explained.
“I don’t understand, Shaun.”
Mark interjected, he was the engineer behind it and wasn’t going to let someone too young to vote try and explain his genius. “See, Mr. Clary, with the original version they made it was so strong that we, which is Scott here and myself, that humans might die from it as well if we inhaled it. Now that wouldn’t be much of a help for humanity now would it?”
“No, probably not. So, you guys inhaled it now and you are good to go?”
“We did overkill with the first batch. The way that our body processes things makes it safe for us to inhale a version of it that isn’t quite as potent. The upside is you won’t die, the downside is that it isn’t quite as powerful but for sure we can still take out thousands where it’d take more bullets than you could possibly imagine to take out what we could with a few vials of this.”
Clary didn’t believe a hundred percent in anything until he had seen it. “You do realize when you try to imply that we don’t have enough bullets that we are on a very well stocked military base, right?”
Mark wasn’t about to let him pop his small bubble and said, “Right, and unless you have suppressors on every gun, I very well don’t think you’ll be able to fire for as long as Earl or anyone with his zombie lung could.”
“Zombie lung?” Clary asked.
“Damn it, Scott, we are beginning to sound like him. He’s rubbing off on us, I can feel the stupid genes right now growing. He named it, not us.”
“Made what?”
“It is a gun, Clary, or a cannon. Earl, believe it or not with all his faults is quite handy with tinkering around. Well, he had a year to go through and do his thing. We tasked him and he figured it out. It worked great until he almost made himself deaf when he ripped the air hose out of it. He has modified it a bit since then. I don’t know if you know much about weapons and guns, but if you do, I’d have to say that for what the guy had to work with it is pretty fucking impressive, excuse my French.”
“You brought everything with you? Is what we need all on that plane?”
“Shaun here was optimistic that you might be available to try and help us make massive amounts of this, as well as figure out a system that might work better for distributing it. He was pretty sure you’d be interested in going after the dead, or the Turned as you call them.”
A single tear rolled down Clary’s cheek from his good eye. “I never thought it would be a realistic option.”
“You don’t gotta cry, Mr. Clary. It’ll be okay, Shaun’s home now and Ellie didn’t cut off his balls like she said she would. Now these guys got a way to kill all of these zombies. Other than some cookies and candy bars there isn’t too much left in life to want, is there? Sounds like you won’t even need all your guns no more with his zombie gun thing,” Joey said as he gave Clary a short hug.
Shaun looked over to Ellie who shrugged. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to do what Joey had said. Clary looked to Bob, no longer in a full flight uniform as he had when he’d been the pilot but now was in mostly scrubs with his pin on his shirt showing his status as a pilot pinned onto them. “You the pilot then?”
Bob nodded, “Yep, been doing this longer than these kids have been alive.”
“Good, why don’t you get in and taxi it over to the gates. We will get everything lowered so you can enter and you guys can lock up whatever you’d like into the storage facility. I don’t want a single bad thing to happen to this stuff. Once we get to see it in action, the two of you are going to be on the top of my list of best buddies.”
Mark gleamed, being popular was not something he was used to. He’d ruined every grade curve he’d ever been a part of and had been a foot shorter than most kids almost the entire time he had been in any time of academic or work environment.
Bob didn’t wait for any further directions; he went to the plane, powering it on, and turned the giant of a beast around until he was able to take it through the gates. By now, word had spread and everyone who was around was busy watching the airliner pull up to the gates. Clary did a circle motion to the teen in the guardhouse who lowered the cylinders blocking anything and anyone from driving through it.
The teens and what adults there were scooted back. The giant aircraft cast shadows as it made its way through the gates. They locked the base back down as soon as the tail made its way through the base entrance. The giant engines wound down, once it got into place, and the rear entrance to the plane opened. Clary didn’t watch the show, he’d seen thousands of planes, and while he was happy as shit to see one moving, it wasn’t enough to keep him from accomplishing a new thought that needed done. Clary disappeared into the storage building and came out quickly with a forklift. He didn’t take too long and before anyone knew it, he was going up the ramp of the plane, disappearing and a few minutes later coming back out with a full load.
Chapter 2
Brandy and Timmy were looking around the base. The size of it compared to the small Iowa farm that they were used to made it minuscule or at least the part that wasn’t planted with seed on a yearly basis. Timmy pulled at her shirt screaming, “Can we go see the tanks, can we go see the tanks?”
Brandy looked around seeing all the unknown faces. She saw that these weren’t your normal teens and adults. These people were armed to the teeth, regardless of their ages. Each one of them standing there was holding a rifle on their shoulders and had a pistol and a backpack. “We aren’t going anywhere alone. We don’t know if there are rules or places that we can’t go. Last thing we need to do is go and get into some sort of trouble.”
“We aren’t going to get in trouble, there’s gotta be like a million kids here,” Timmy yelled, stomping his feet.
“That’s enough of that, Timmy, no means no. We are going to see where we are sleeping, and then we can talk to Shaun and see what we are supposed to do. I’m sure that there is some sort of normal routine. I want to ask him some questions anyways when we see him.”
“Questions about what, Brandy?” Shaun asked.
She’d not seen him coming and he startled her. “Oh well, Timmy wanted a tour, I think, so he can figure out what he thinks he is going to get into trouble with first. I wanted to know one small question if it isn’t a big deal?”
“Shoot.”
“Well…I understand that we are on an army base and I guess when you showed up armed to the teeth it shouldn’t leave me too curious…”
“What is it? You aren’t going to offend me.”
“What is with all the guns, I mean, do they really all need to carry all that stuff with them at all times?”
“No, they don’t have to, they are ordered to. We implemented it last year and never turned back. If you want to stay here, you need to do something to contribute. Not saying that they kick out the deadbeats but they don’t go out of their way if one wants to leave to try and keep them here.”
“So, are you all ordered to wear and carry all that stuff?”
<
br /> “Timmy, why don’t you go over to that guy, his name is Joey, super nice guy, I need to talk to Brandy about some stuff.”
“Are you going to kiss?”
“No, I mean…”
“Timmy, would you please just listen for once. Go introduce yourself to Joey, now!”
“I don’t even know him.”
“And that’s why you’ll introduce yourself to him. Who knows, you might end up being buddies?”
“He’s like thirty years older than me though.”
“I think he is sixteen or seventeen; I can’t remember for sure. Why don’t you go ask him, if anyone around here has some sort of stash of goodies, it is going to be Joey. I can almost guarantee you.”
Timmy peered around Shaun, taking in the massive boy who was kneeling on a knee at the moment and picking through pebbles on the ground. He squeezed through in-between Shaun and Brandy and ran over to Joey, his casted shadow blocking Joey’s view. He looked up, frowning at Timmy, but like always, it didn’t take too long to turn into a very happy smile. Joey looked to Shaun who gave him a thumb up and he popped up from the ground taking Timmy with him to show him the sights.
“Thanks for sending him out if he isn’t supposed to hear whatever you look like you don’t want to say.”
“Ellie had gotten hurt when we had thought of something we thought was a good idea at the time. We just figured a road trip would be no biggie, and my god, did things go wrong. Ellie got hurt while we were out, we met a lot of new people, and she was in like a coma or something. I didn’t know if she’d ever wake back up, and I was terrified.”
“Well it would seem that she woke up, right?”
“Well, before that, I had this great idea that I’d tried out before when Ellie wasn’t doing very well. She’d been out of it for a while. I started hanging blood bags from light poles and letting them drip. I’d never wanted revenge so bad in all my life. Hanging those blood bags was like sticking a bee in a flower shop, there was nothing they could do to control them.”
“So, it was your way to kill those things?” Brandy asked.
“I did, and that was our first issue with the group that came after us. We hadn’t been opposed to newcomers. We had started taking in people, looking for survivors, trying to clear out the dead along the way. We were getting pretty good at it at one point. When we brought in someone it turned out they had been a spy, which is comical given we accepted everyone. We just asked small things like that they help and don’t cause issues. We had plenty of food, enough shelter, clothes, and space to make this place feel like a home…however dysfunctional that would be, being that it is a military base.”
“And what did the spy do then?”
“She slit my friend Patrick’s throat and helped her friends get in the gate in the back. After that, everything, and I mean everything, went to hell. They killed so many people and that is why Clary’s got the eye issue as well. It made trusting people that much more difficult. It changed about everything for me.”
“How so?”
Shaun nodded and said, “We retaliated against them.”
“Well you should, they deserved it…”
“Clary was angry, to put it lightly. We took one of the tanks over there, he and Greg bombed down on them, it was almost a complete success.”
“You guys didn’t feel guilty for what you did?”
“I hadn’t had enough time. I went with one of Clary’s SEAL Team members. We took another girl with us as well. We were going to test out some silenced sniper rifles and rain down hell on the Turned.”
“Did you three get overrun by the dead? How did you get away?”
“No, if it’d have been the dead, that would be something I could at least consider handling. When we’d bombed those with the tank, we had apparently not gotten everyone. The guy in charge made it, and while we were busy shooting the Turned, the guy sighted in and shot both of them,” Shaun cleared his throat, he shivered, he could still feel the warm blood from each of their skulls hitting the sides of his face. The only reason I survived was because of the fact that he’d reacted quickly and that the guy hadn’t picked me to be first or I wouldn’t have been here to talk about it now.
“So, did you get away? I mean is that when you left and hit the road?”
Shaun nodded, “I left after I dealt with the guy.”
“What’d you do?”
“He wasn’t a threat after I was done with him. I left him for the Turned to do what they wanted with him. From the sounds of his screams, it didn’t seem like he was going to be any issue to worry about going forward. I couldn’t handle the guilt after that and hit the road. I didn’t want to bring anyone into my new circle, but it didn’t matter, and I just kept collecting new faces.”
“I’m sure it hurts, but I’m glad that you did. I don’t know how long we would have tried to wait it out in the basement. I think if we’d have tried for too much longer that we either would have gone insane or Timmy or Talon would have screwed up and found a way to make enough noise that the dead knew where we were and then dismantled the house trying to make their way in.”
“It is nice to know that something good came out of it, I guess, right?”
Shaun thought of their grandma running around when they showed up. Saving two would not make up for losing Aslin and McQuaig, it never would, not that he truly blamed himself for what had happened. It just didn’t make anything any easier. There wasn’t anything to say so he just smiled. “So how long will it be before they start arming Timmy and I?”
Shaun smiled, and this time it was believable. “You’ll need to wait awhile first. But don’t worry, I’m sure that they still do fitness in the mornings if I know Clary. We know that we can’t outrun them, but being quick on your feet can lead to saving your own ass quite quickly.”
“I hate running.”
“You’ll really hate running after you start going for your first five-mile run. Once you can knock one of those out you start going for a little longer and a little longer until you can run as far as he can.”
“Then I have to worry about carrying one of those machine guns around?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You’ll know when you get to carry one when Clary starts training you. Once he trusts you, that’s when you get a gun.”
“Gotcha, well hopefully he isn’t too worried about me since I came with you.”
“I can’t think that it would hurt. The fact you are from a completely different place with no knowledge of this one won’t hurt anything either. That bunk over there looks to be like where you are staying at.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t really know yet, I slept over there since we got here with a lot of them. We’ve moved around a few times. After those guys shot the place up, we didn’t want to sleep where we’d started. It wasn’t pleasant and shortly after that was when I left. They might still be sleeping in the infirmary.”
“So, they are putting us in the place where everyone died?”
“There are a lot of bunkhouses, but keeping everyone close is the way to go. We walk perimeters at night and we are far enough out that we don’t get a lot of traffic.”
“Yeah, it's real quiet out here. How many of those things did you just kill?”
“Remember, it started here in Des Moines and Adel. There’s a helluva a lot of the dead here. We’ve killed a lot of them, but I know there’s no shortage left.”
“We came back here to fix this, right?”
“Right.”
Chapter 3
Next Morning
Clary had a fresh pot of coffee sitting on the table and was blowing on a cup he’d poured for himself. Mark and Scott came in first, followed by Shaun, Greg, Ellie, and Earl. Clary looked at Earl when he came in and questioned, “What are you doing, Earl?
“Following this group of folks. See, in the Army, you see yourself a group and you go with em, keeps you from being late. It also has some r
eal big benefits sometimes.”
“Benefits?”
“See, now, nobody eats cake alone.”
“Cake?”
“Yeah, you know, cake. They take some eggs, and flour, little vanilla extract, not the imitation shit neither-”
Clary cut him off, “Fuck, I know what cake is, what the hell are you talking about!”
“You follow the line and that’s when you could find a birthday cake. I love cake, don’t matter none if it is chocolate, vanilla, chocolate with vanilla, I ain’t picky.”
“So, you thought that maybe you were going to find some cake following everyone in here?”
